1930s

  • Lowell Sherman – The Greeks Had a Word for Them AKA Three Broadway Girls (1932)

    1931-1940ClassicsComedyLowell ShermanUSA

    In this sophisticated Jazz Age comedy, a trio of money-hungry women all have sugar daddies who keep them in the lap of luxury, even as they drive the men crazy. Each woman represents a different personality type, from sensitive, to kind-hearted, to difficult and untrustworthy. The twenties come roaring back with immorality and in-fighting.Read More »

  • Frank Ward Rossak – Das Notizbuch des Mr. Pim (1930)

    Frank Ward Rossak1921-1930AustriaPoliticsSilent

    Quote:
    Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim is structured around competing and contradictory narratives. While notes taken during an interview with a right-wing journalist – a convenient device in a silent film – tell of economic and cultural decline, of the very great damage that the empowerment of the workers has done to ‘das schone alte Wien’ [beautiful old Vienna], this account and its nostalgia for ‘das goldene Wienerherz’ [the golden heart of Vienna] are repeatedly juxtaposed with images of capitalist exploitation, militarism, extreme poverty and grim living conditions in the pre-1918 period. The charges against the Socialist administration are then refuted, almost point by point, as Phyllis and her fiance show their visitor (who, like that other American archetype, Homer Simpson, hails from Springfield, USA!) around the new Vienna, notably taking him to Karl-Marx-Hof in order to disprove the claim that the showpiece of the municipal housebuilding programme is already in need of repair…….Read More »

  • Julien Duvivier – Au bonheur des dames (1930)

    1921-1930DramaFranceJulien DuvivierSilent

    Denise, an orphaned girl, moves to Paris where she hopes to find work at her uncle’s store. But the glamorous department store ‘Aux Bonheur des Dames’ across the street crunches all the little businesses around. She finds a position there.Read More »

  • José Cottinelli Telmo – A Canção de Lisboa AKA A Song of Lisbon (1933)

    1931-1940ClassicsComedyJosé Cottinelli TelmoPortugal

    Quote:
    How happy and proud they are those two ladies back in their Tras-os-Montes region! Thanks to them, their bright nephew can study medicine in Lisbon and may already have become a physician. Little do they know. Not only has Vasco wasted his time drinking, dancing and picking up girls but he has just failed his examination. To crown it all, his two aunts announce their visit. Totally distraught, Vasco tries to make them believe he is already a doctor, but they are not taken in and decide to cut off their support from him…Read More »

  • Fernando de Fuentes – El fantasma del convento AKA The Phantom of the Convent (1934)

    1931-1940AdventureFernando de FuentesHorrorMexico

    Alfonso, Eduardo and Cristina get lost when visiting a forest. A strange monk finds them and takes them to an ancient convent. There, the three amigos suffer personality changes, specially Cristina who tries to seduce Alfonso in a strange coincidence to a story told by an old monk. After some efforts to escape, Alfonso is trapped inside a jail and more strange and macabre situations happen.Read More »

  • Lloyd Corrigan – Dancing Pirate (1936)

    1931-1940AdventureLloyd CorriganMusicalUSA

    Charles Collins stars in Dancing Pirate as a dance teacher from Boston who is tricked into joining a band of pirates, leading him to be fitted for a noose in California. Compared to “Douglas Fairbanks in his most acrobatic days,” Collins catches a break when the mayor’s daughter (Steffi Duna) demands the hanging be postponed until he teaches her to waltz.

    Dancing Pirate earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Dance Direction and was billed as “the first dancing musical in 100% new Technicolor.”Read More »

  • Yves Mirande & Georges Lacombe – Derrière la Façade AKA Behind the Facade (1939)

    1931-1940CrimeFranceGeorges LacombeMysteryYves Mirande

    Synopsis
    Two rival police inspectors, Boucheron and Baumer, investigate the murder of the owner of a well-to-do apartment block. Madame Mathieu has been found stabbed to death in the lift, and there is no shortage of suspects. The murder weapon is a knife which belongs to a resident knife thrower, Picking, and which is found in the room of a kleptomaniac, Corbeau. No sooner have these two suspects been arrested than a young bank clerk, André, confesses – not to the murder but to defrauding his employer. Could the murderer be the sinister Eric, who is revealing his nasty character during a game of cards? Could it be the unscrupulous Alfredo, a classy crook who abuses women? Or could it be the son of the respectable Président Bernier, eager to repay his father for having a mistress? As they delve deeper into the private lives of the dead woman’s tenants, Boucheron and Baumer make more than a few surprising discoveries. But will they solve the crime..?Read More »

  • Douglas Sirk – Schlußakkord AKA The Final Chord (1936)

    1931-1940ClassicsDouglas SirkDramaGermanyThird Reich Cinema

    Plot:
    A young, impoverished German woman named Hanna (Maria von Tasnady) gives her infant up for adoption and emigrates to American to live with her husband. When her husband commits suicide, Hanna returns to Germany and works her way into becoming the live-in maid and nurse to her child being raised by an orchestra conductor and his wife.Read More »

  • Michael Curtiz – Dodge City (1939)

    1931-1940ClassicsMichael CurtizUSAWestern

    Synopsis:
    Dodge City. A wide-open cattle town run by Jeff Surrett. Even going on a children’s Sunday outing is not a safe thing to do. What the place needs is a fearless honest Marshal. A guy like Wade Hatton, who helped bring the railroad in. It may not help that he fancies Abbie Irving, who won’t have anything to do with him since he had to shoot her brother. But that’s the West.Read More »

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